The present invention comprises a new and distinct cultivar of Guzmania plant, hereinafter referred to by the cultivar name `Apache`. The genus Guzmania is a member of the family Bromeliaceae.
Guzmania is predominantly epiphytic with a few terrestrial species and is native to the tropics. For the most part, species vary in diameter from 7 or 8 inches to 3 or 4 feet and have rosettes of glossy, smooth-edged leaves.
Floral bracts of Guzmania frequently have brilliant colors and may last for many months. The range of colors for Guzmania is generally from yellow through orange but may also include flame red and red-purple. White or yellow, tubular, three-petalled flowers may also appear on a stem or within the leaf rosette but are usually short-lived.
Guzmania may be advantageously grown as pot plants for greenhouse or home use. Desirably, the plants are shaded from direct sunlight, and during the spring to autumn period, the central vase-like part of the leaf rosette is desirably filled with water .
Guzmania is native to tropical America. Leaves of Guzmania are usually formed as basal rosettes, which are stiff and entire and in several vertical ranks. Guzmania plants have terminal spikes or panicles which are often bracted with petals united in a tube about as long as the calyx. The ovary is superior and the seeds plumose.
Asexual propagation of Guzmania is frequently done through the use of tissue culture practices. Propagation can also be form offshoots produced by the plant which may then be rooted. The resulting plantlets are detached from the mother plant and may be potted in a suitable growing mixture. Methods for cultivation and crossing of Guzmania are well known.
`Apache` is a product of a planned breeding program which had the objective of creating new and attractive cultivars with distinctive shapes, sizes and flowering forms.
The new cultivar originated from a hybridization made in a controlled breeding program in Balsa, Costa Rica in 1988. The female parent was an unnamed plant of Guzmania lingulata (white form No. 131, unpatented).times.Guzmania wittmackii (purple form). The male parent was Guzmania wittmackii `Rojo Vivo` (unpatented). `Apache` was discovered and selected within the progeny of the stated parentage by the inventor, Chester Skotak, Jr., in 1994, in a controlled environment in Balsa, Costa Rica.
`Apache` is characterized by its striking red inflorescence with a white center at the apex of the inflorescence. Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar by tissue culture was performed by the inventor in a controlled environment in 1994, and has demonstrated that the combination of characteristics as herein disclosed for the new cultivar are firmly fixed and reproduces true to type through successive generations of asexual reproduction.